APL’s American headquarters in Oakland will be shut down and moved “to a more cost effective location elsewhere in the United States.”

And this may be just the beginning. “NOL said it did not see a recovery from the challenging conditions for quite some time and the potential exists for them to persist for the next few years,” according to a press release.

APL’s employees received the grim news by way of an e-mail from company honcho, Ron Widdows, which came into our hands. It reads, in part (my emphases in bold face):

Colleagues

I have written to you previously about the extremely difficult business conditions our company is facing in the wake of the global financial crisis. We are now seeing dramatic impacts on the engine that drives international trade — spending by consumers — and there has been an acute drop in trade flows in the major East/West trades.

The external environment has worsened considerably over the past month and we anticipate further deterioration in trading conditions going forward.

NOL expects to post an operating loss in the fourth quarter of this year and the situation we face, in terms of our outlook for profitability in 2009, is indeed grim.

We don’t see a recovery from these challenging conditions for quite some time and the potential exists for them to persist for the next few years. The fact is no-one knows how long this extraordinary situation will last or how deep it will go.

The shifts that have occurred in global markets go beyond a normal cyclical downturn. They necessitate hard decisions and require us to take fundamentally different approaches to those we have pursued in the past.

The senior management of the company is finalizing work on what has been a very difficult 2009 budgeting process. We have decided on a number of actions to reduce costs and to place the cost structure of our Group on a more sustainable footing.

The effect of these steps will be a reduction in the size of the Group’s global workforce of about 1,000 positions.

The largest impacts will occur in the Americas region, where the company’s cost base is highest. A key action will be the relocation of the Oakland regional headquarters to a new, more cost effective location elsewhere in the United States. A decision on the location and timeframe for transition to the new regional headquarters will be announced in December 2008.

There will be additional business adjustments in Europe and across the company’s Asian regions.

Regional Presidents and local business leaders will be communicating with you further to provide more information about the consequences of these decisions and the processes that will be followed to implement them.

We will be in a position to detail the implications for most individual employees very shortly and will communicate developments as soon as decisions are able to be taken.

I know today’s announcement will create uncertainty and anxiety for many employees in the short term. It is very disappointing to be in a position where we must make these changes. We recognize there will be a significant impact on a large number of valued employees who have worked tirelessly for our company.

In making these very tough decisions, our aims are to ensure a viable future for our company, to shape it to handle the turbulence ahead and to be positioned for success when the global economy recovers.

We are not going down this path simply to improve earnings. This is truly based on the conviction that, without these steps, our business would be at risk. I have no doubt that these are necessary and correct decisions in the long term interests of our Group and the many people who depend on it.

We will be consulting with customers about today’s announcement and the other service adjustments we previously announced.

Finally, you should feel free to raise questions about these business changes and we will endeavor to answer them.